Foliar Feeding the Pumpkin Plant

Today I did a foliar application of 7-4-5 and multimineral on the plants.  The multimineral is a blend of chelated minerals that are essential to the plant.  Foliar feeding can be helpful, because it can give the plant what it needs through the leaf tissue that it may not be able to adequately take up via the roots.  I don't prefer to do a lot of foliar feeding, because I think it can be hard on the leaves, but I think some is a good idea.

Plant has been growing really nicely over the last week.  I think in about two weeks I'll be fully terminated.  Main vine is about 5 feet from the end of the greenhouse.  The pumpkin growth is relatively slow however.  That isn't untypical for me however this time of year.  Not sure why, but early growth has been slow the previous years here as well.  But then around day 30 after pollination it starts picking up speed, but not big growth and the growth after that has traditionally been steady for a long period.

I'm loving the smoothness and length on this pumpkin.

This year I'm going to try doing something different.  Around day 28, I'm going to add some heat over night in the greenhouse for about 10 days.  Too cost prohibitive to do more than that.  I believe my limiting factor is the nigh time temps and I want to see if I get the greenhouse 7 degrees warmer at night if I see better pumpkin gains.

Today my son pollinated his 1398 Janowaik (1501 VanderWielen x 1885 Werner) with my 1825 Sadiq.  The plan was to self it, but there were no male flowers available.  His plant's growth has been somewhat slow, so for the last couple of weeks we've been throwing more nitrogen at it and it is starting to take off now.